Veteran recalls building airstrips during war

The following interview of Luther McDowell was conducted on March 16, 2010, in Cherryvale, Kan., by Joe L. Todd for the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan.

The following interview of Luther McDowell was conducted on March 16, 2010, in Cherryvale, Kan., by Joe L. Todd for the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan.

Todd: Sir, where were you born?

McDowell: Agnes, Mo.

T: When were you born?

M: Oct. 28, 1917.

T: Who was your father?

M: William C. McDowell.

T: And you mother?

M: Ida Leona Chandler.

T: Did you go through school in Agnes?

M: No. We left there when I was about 6 years old and moved to Miami, Okla.

T: Why did the family move to Miami?

M: My dad worked for a cattle ranch there 3 years. I went to school there 3 years then we moved to Cherryvale.

T: Why did the family move to Cherryvale?

M: We planned to go to western Kansas and got hung up in a storm and were here a few days and my dad found a job here so we stayed here.

T: When did you move to Cherryvale?

M: 1928.

T: What year did you graduate from high school?

M: I never graduated.

T: What type of work did your father do in Cherryvale?

M: He was a farmer.

T: How did the Depression affect you and your family?

M: It hit us pretty hard. My dad worked for the WPA. Just about all of my life I had a job of some kind but never made much money.

T: What did you do for recreation?

M: We had a lot of recreation. We played ball and skate and I used to box quite a bit when I was a kid. We would hunt squirrels. We didn’t have anything like the kids have today. The ice on Big Hill Creek would get 6 or 8 inches thick and chop holes in the ice and fish. We used a tin can and would play shinny.

T: What is shinny?

M: It is like hockey only you used a tin can.

T: Was there a movie theater in Cherryvale?

M: Yes.

T: What was the name of the theater?

M: It seems to me it was Liberty.

T: In the movies they had the Movietone News. The rise of Hitler in Europe and the big rallies. What did you think about this?

M: I went into the Army in 1941 and I was right in it. I was in California and there was a guy standing there and he was a WWII veteran. He said to me that I would go because I was the right age. He was right.

T: Why did you go to California?

M: To work.

T: Where were you working?

M: I worked for Libby’s at Greeley, Calif., in a Peach Cannery. I was only there 2 seasons, 2 years, and came back to Kansas.

T: Did you join the Army or were you drafted?

M: I volunteered for the draft in August 1941.

T: Where did you go for your Basic Training?

M: Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. Basic Training was pretty rough. Engineer training is one of the roughest. They used us for everything and I wound up in the heavy equipment motor pool and got out of some of that hiking.

T: What type of vehicles were you working on as a mechanic?

M: Trucks and road graders.

T: Was it engineer basic at Fort Leonard Wood?

M: Yes.

T: How long did Basic last?

M: 13 weeks.

T: What is your most vivid memory of Basic?

M: Mostly just being there. You get used to Army rules and regulations. I made it all right and had no trouble. Some of it was rough, the 10 miles hikes with the full field pack.

T: What is in a full field pack?

M: You got everything, your shelter half, blanket and your rifle and bayonet. You had about 50 pounds of stuff. I got into that heavy equipment and was on an earth augur and would demonstrate to the mess people how to dig a hole.

T: What time was reveille?

M: It seems we got up at 5:00. We had breakfast pretty early, had sick call, then hit the road to whatever we were doing.

T: From Fort Leonard Wood where did you go?

M: From Fort Leonard Wood, I went to Camp Robinson, Ark. The first outfit I was in was 23rd Engineers at Fort Leonard Wood then in the 43rd Engineers at Camp Robinson.

T: What did you do at Camp Robinson?

M: Not much of anything until the war was declared.

T: Where were you Dec. 7, 1941?

M: I was on KP at Camp Robinson.

T: When you heard about the Japanese attack what did you think?

M: I was on KP on Sunday and had just left the mess hall and went back to the tent and someone said the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. After that it was a completely different deal. Up until then everybody had a class A pass and could go to town anytime he wanted to. It was pretty nice; I liked it. After Pearl Harbor they called us to attention and put us to work and the first thing we did was loading out the 35th Division, a National Guard Division. We went three days without sleep. They went out to the West Coast and loaded us up and sent us to Australia.

T: Did you think the Japanese were going to invade the West Coast?

M: I didn’t know. The first two years of the war we never heard anybody say when the war would be over because they were kicking our butt. We really didn’t have much to fight with. My outfit fought the first successful battle against the Japanese. Japanese Marines invaded New Guinea and each company had a half track with a 37 mm machine gun. We were building an airfield and the Japs came in on the other side and took cover behind the coconut trees. A .50-caliber machine gun shell went through those coconut trees and there was a Jap behind every tree.

T: You left the States from which port?

M: Brooklyn Navy Yards.

T: Do you recall the name of the ship?

M: The Thomas H. Barry. It was an Oriental liner turned into a troop ship.

T: Did you know where you were going?

M: No, we pulled out into the Atlantic and headed south and a German submarine chased us all the way to Panama. We had all sorts of escorts. One morning we woke up down in the Caribbean and we were out of the convoy, just us and one other ship and running wide open. We made two big circles and pulled right into our place in the convoy. They said they sunk two German submarines down there.

T: Why did the ship leave the convoy?

M: It was a safety factor. At that time it took 2 or 3 minutes for the submarine to set their sights on a ship and those 2 ships were fast enough they didn’t have time to line up.

T: Where were your quarters on the Barry?

M: Bunk beds on the deck.

T: How high were they stacked?

M: About 4 high.

T: Many guys get seasick?

M: Oh yes.

T: Did you get seasick?

M: I got sick but not sick enough to vomit. We hit rough water after we hit the Indian Ocean and that was the worst. Waves were 40 feet tall and we were dipping water and everyone got sick. That was a mess. We were off Australia but couldn’t see it and a Japanese submarine fired a torpedo and it went right in front of the ship. We had a Navy cruiser as an escort and started making circles and talked to the crew later and they said they got that submarine.

T: How were the meals?

M: No good, we got slop twice a day and almost ran out of that before we got there.

T: How long did the trip take?

M: 37 days. You can get hungry in 37 days.

T: Where did the ship land?

M: Melbourne, Australia.

T: What did you do in Melbourne?

M: Nothing, just got the equipment ready to go north. We convoyed by trucks. We drove from Melbourne clear to the Northern Territory.

T: How long did that take?

M: I don’t know how many days but it was quite a while. That is the biggest desert in the world. Part of the time we rode the narrow gauge railroad. The trucks were on flatcars. That was a miserable trip. The flies were bad and we had camps where we were supposed to eat. The Australians made stew in big pots. There was no way of getting that stew in your mess kit and eating it without having at least 20 flies on it. My driver and I ate out of the back of the truck.

T: What was the reaction of the local people to you in Australia?

M: They were real friendly and nice. They were more like American people and were tickled to death to see us because they thought the Japs were going to take them.

T: Do you recall the date you left the US?

M: Jan. 23, 1942. We landed in Australia Feb. 25.

T: When did the Japanese bomb Australia?

M: That was in 1942. I don’t know the date, but I was in Darwin shortly after they bombed it. The town was nothing but foundations; they blew that place. One thing I will never forget. We went into a house and the chairs were still around the table and the dishes were still on the table. There was a baby basket there and you could tell they jumped up, grabbed the baby and ran and never came back. There were several places like that and it broke your heart to look at it.

T: Where did you go in the Northern Territory?

M: We went to Kathryn, about 100 miles south of Darwin.

T: When did you leave Australia?

M: My first day in combat was Thanksgiving Day 1942 at Dobudura, New Guinea. We landed there at Port Moresby and were lucky to make it and the guys on the radio said it was going to be bombed and strafed. We took off and the Japanese came in and hit a group of our guys and then they took off. I guess they were out of ammunition because they didn’t hit us. We were sitting ducks.

T: Was that at Dobudura?

M: Yes. The next day was my first time in combat.

T: What happened?

M: Machine guns. We put in more time hiding.

T: What type of defensive position did you have?

M: Just our rifles. We had one machine gun, an old World War I water cooled machine gun. We were cutting grass strips so planes could land. In the afternoon our planes couldn’t get there. The Japs would take over control of the air. I don’t know how many Zeroes they had, but there was a bunch of them. They shot at us and I don’t know how anyone lived through that, but they didn’t hit one of us guys. One boy had a trench gun and he was on the machine gun and it got so hot steam was coming off and he shot down several of those Zeroes.

T: What were you doing while this was going on?

M: That day I had an attack of Malaria and I was in the pup tent back in the woods. I was going back to the field in a jeep and heard shells hitting the ground and it looked like they were plowing the ground. I jumped out of the jeep into a hole and stayed there until they stopped shooting.

T: How long were you in New Guinea?

M: I was in New Guinea 2 years then went to the Dutch East Indies to the Island of Morotai.

T: What were you doing in New Guinea and the East Indies?

M: Most of the time I was a heavy equipment operator and mechanic.

T: What type of heavy equipment?

M: Caterpillars, graders and trucks.

T: What were you building?

M: Airfields. When we were in New Guinea we were attached to the 5th Air Corps. When we went to the Dutch East Indies we were attached to the 13th Air Corps.

T: What were the airfields made of?

M: A lot of the time it was just the dirt with steel matting, temporary. Then we laid asphalt. On Morotai Island a lot of the B-24s would crack up when they landed. It was halfway between Borneo and Philippines.

T: Why were they cracking up when they landed?

M: They would be shot up. The best plane that would take more fire was the B-17. I have seen B-17s with one or two engines shot out and they would still bring them in. I was driving the crash truck one day at New Guinea when they were hitting Rabaul, New Britain, and the B-25s and A-20s would come in and belly land and maybe with one wheel land. We didn’t lose too many when they landed like that. A B-25 came in all shot up and pulled it right beside my wrecker and I went over to look at it and I bet a gallon of blood ran out the tail end. There must have been 100 bullet holes in the tail. That happened all the time. They would work those planes over and get them back in action as quick as they could.

T: How often would the Japanese bomb your area?

M: Depends on what was going on. When we were building an airfield they didn’t bother us too much until we got it done. When they brought the planes in at night with a full moon you could depend on an attack.

T: What did the Japanese planes sound like?

M: They had a different sound than ours. You could hear them coming. We had one old boy we called Ack Ack. He could hear those planes before anyone else was right 90 percent of the time.

T: Did you listen to Tokyo Rose?

M: Yes, she used to talk to us quite a bit. She told us when we built the airfield at Dobudura that they were not going to tear it up, because they wanted it. She said they were going to take it and they lost 22 ships trying to get in there. I was out there when one of the airplanes came in and used up all its bombs and the crew got out and laid down and went to sleep. The ground crew loaded it with bombs and fuel then woke the crew up and they jumped back in that airplane and took off. As far as they knew, one Japanese destroyer got away and they sunk the rest.

T: What battle was that?

M: Bismarck Sea.

T: What did you do during that battle?

M: I just helped with whatever there was to do. I did work on a log road across swamps so they could get jeeps and ammunition up to the front lines. We loaded a lot of the wounded on the front lines on a jeep. They would be on a stretcher with a bullet through the leg or shoulder. They laid there and smiled at you because they were going home.

T: You built airfields on how many islands?

M: We built one in Northern Australia, New Guinea, one in the Dutch East Indies. When we got to the Philippines we were in the field ever since we had been in the war and when MacArthur got in Manila he said, "Leave those boys there because they have been there long enough." We were base troops there. We had to salute the officer and we didn’t like that and they tried to get us back in the field because we were told we were better field troops than base troops. MacArthur said no that we had been there long enough. We had equipment around Manila we worked on. I would go down in the combat zone almost every night.

T: How far was that from Manila?

M: Our camp was just outside of the Manila city limits and I went down about 20 miles downriver. I got to one place down there and Japanese shells were going one way and the American shells were going the other way and we hoped they didn’t get together overhead. That was Apo Dam. It was between 2 mountains and that was an experience you will never forget.

T: When you were on the islands how were you traveling around?

M: Mostly by jeep.

T: How about in the Philippines?

M: By truck or pickup. I had a maintenance truck.

T: Were you following the progress of the war?

M: Yes, we kept track of what was going on. I remember when the war in Europe ended, I was in Manila and we had a radio someone had swiped out of a home and the program was interrupted and we knew what it was. We were still stuck in the Philippines and no one said a word. Pretty soon someone said, "Deal the cards." I think I was dealing. We felt worse then; it was over for those guys. We were sent to Japan then.

T: Did you think you would get replacements from Europe?

M: We didn’t know. We thought we might get some help. The Captain called me up to the orderly tent and told me that I had enough points to get out, but if I stayed we were going to Japan.

T: Where were you when the war ended?

M: I landed in San Francisco on Aug. 14.

T: Tell me about coming home.

M: We got into San Francisco and went to Angel Island and just got off the ship and was shaving and the whistles started blowing guys started yelling the war was over. I had half of my face shaved.

T: How long did the trip take home?

M: About 20 days.

T: Tell me about V-J Day.

M: I was in San Francisco. They wouldn’t let us go to town. They shut us down. The next morning we left for Colorado and went through Oakland and there were cars turned over and they tore that town up.

T: When did you get your discharge?

M: Aug. 19, 1945.

T: What did you do after the war?

M: I worked here in Cherryvale and sold automobiles and did some maintenance work and welding. Later I worked for the railroad for a while then I went to work for the Post Office and retired.

T: Would you join the Army again?

M: I don’t know. If I was a young buck I might. I might join the Navy.

T: Why?

M: I like the sea.

T: How do you want to be remembered?

M: Just as a regular fellow. I have lived a good clean life.

T: Where did you meet your wife?

M: Here in Cherryvale.

T: What is her name?

M: Lillian Allen. I knew her in grade school.

T: When did you get married?

M: In 1946. I wrote to her when I was overseas. We were on a liberty ship off New Guinea and were ahead of schedule and I sat there 3 or 4 days and they flew the mail in and I got a card from her and I said if she was the same girl, I was going to marry her.

T: Sir this is an excellent interview. I want to thank you for your service and thank you for the interview.

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